Newsom busted

I’m not a member of the nail-Newsom squad. I don’t really care how many trips the man takes, or to where. But I do think when you’re a mayor trying to make your city the greenest in the country, you shouldn’t drive the world’s largest SUV to an Earth Day ceremony.

The ceremony, as it turns out, was a breakfast hosted by the mayor, where he announced the launch of an online tool for tracking your own and your neighborhood’s carbon footprints. I posted the story yesterday, but it’s hardly an environmental slam dunk for a big-city mayor on Earth Day.

(The net app also has me wondering: What on Earth do I need to know my neighbors’ carbon footprints for? To feel smug if I live in an affluent neighborhood like Bernal Hill? To scold my neighbors based on ZIP-code averages? Calculating my own carbon footprint could be useful, but I just don’t see what my neighbors have to do with it.)

My general neutrality on the Newsom matter notwithstanding, I’m giving his Earth Day performance a D-. And I’ll take the opportunity to share with him a little adage my mother used to say to me: The only way to lead is by example.

Stepping back for a moment: what do you think of Newsom’s overall environmental performance? Are his initiatives substantive or PR gimmicks? Has the mayor gone too far or not far enough?